JANUARY 5, 2007

Super Aguri - the full story

The plans for Super Aguri F1's 2007 car are now becoming clear. The car will be completely new and will be designed for the team by outside contractor called PeeJayUU Ltd, an engineering consultancy based near Milton Keynes. This is headed by experienced F1 man Paul White and has been operating since January last year when White established the business to work with Super Aguri.

The team itself has expanded to 165 people but is getting a lot of help from the Japanese engineers at Honda R&D at Tochigi. The aerodynamic programme is being run by Ben Wood, who has been in F1 for the last 13 years, having started out as an aerodynamicist with Minardi. He went on to work at Ferrari, Tyrrell, Prost, Jaguar and Minardi again before spending two years working with Piper Design, working on Le Mans cars. He joined Super Aguri last year and has been working in the 50% National Physical Laboratory windtunnel in Teddington, Middlesex, a facility which was used for many years by McLaren before the team built is own tunnel in Woking.

The team says that it is hoping to land a big title sponsor this year but at the moment there are no hints about who negotiations are with.